1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to the field of social media. More particularly, the invention pertains to methods of sharing a uniform resource locator and services to provide live discussions about internet-based content among previously-unacquainted members of the public.
2. Description of Related Art
Many people want to increase their contacts on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ for social and professional reasons. However, it is difficult to find and get to know new people online who share your interests and to determine among these people those with whom there might be a mutual interest in becoming “friends”, “followers”, or “connections”. Even if such potential contacts could be identified, it is difficult for both parties to get to know each other well enough to be comfortable to agree to add each other on social networking sites or to make these new contacts socially or professionally meaningful.
There are a few non-dating social websites that allow people who are unacquainted with each other to meet live online and discuss topics. Tinychat.com is a website in which people create their own public “rooms” that are assigned a name of their choosing and that are based on a live feed from their own webcam. Other Tinychat.com members can join these rooms if they wish to participate in text chat or add their own webcam feed to the room. The social network Google+ includes a similar feature called Hangouts, in which users can create public rooms based on any name and a feed of their own webcam. As in Tinychat, Google Hangout members can join “hangouts” and add their own webcam feed to the hangout. Similar services are provided by other web applications, such as Spreecast.com and SocialMunch.com. Another web application, Chattp.com, does not easily allow unacquainted people to meet, but it does provide a way for friends or acquaintances to chat live on a web page. Finally, Gabbly.com and Yaplet.com, two now-defunct services, allowed members of the public to chat in a sidebar frame on web pages.
Current chat applications fail to help people develop meaningful contacts, because they fail to address the many inhibitions that most people feel about joining a public chat and even about announcing to others the availability of such a chat. As a result, these sites and applications fail to bring together the numbers people with common interests in live chat rooms that are necessary to make the meeting of good friendship candidates likely. For example, one of the inhibitors that prevent people from using chat sites is that readers must go out of their way to find and use them as a separate activity, instead of seeing live social opportunities arise incidentally as they engage in their normal online activities.
Another inhibitor to joining live chats in rooms is that frequently the rooms are owned by an individual or group, so that the prospect of joining them seems like an intrusion into someone else's private space, as opposed to a meeting in a neutral location. In addition, 1) existing chat applications are often typified by aimless (if not vulgar) discussions that at best serve as temporary distractions, 2) they are often dominated by a single youthful demographic and may be or seem unwelcoming to people who do not fit this particular demographic, 3) the sharing of links to join these live chats carries too much of a social risk for many people, 4) meeting new people through these chat services seems pointless to many people, even though meeting new like-minded people in general may be an attractive prospect to them, and 5) the topics assigned to public chat rooms are not specific enough to users' interests to make the prospect of meeting other unknown people in a public chat devoted to these topics seem worthwhile.